Hey all! I know it’s been a long time since I’ve updated. The last few months have been a whirlwind of trying to balance a challenging day job with a long commute, cramming tutorials during the evening, and working on achieving the ever-elusive work-life balance everyone’s always talking about.

So here’s an update on some things I’ve learned along the way.

Working for a small company is a great way to learn ALL THE THINGS.

I started my front end web developer job October 15, thinking I would be doing primarily design and working with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Um, reality check! As the main web developer in a small company, I’ve had to:

Dive headfirst into reading and writing PHP and mySQL to try and achieve better site functionality on the Brilliant Directories platform — *cough cough* a platform with very, very little documentation and a business model that tries to leave you so in the dark about their code that you’ll hire one of their own developers to get the job done

Grapple with UI mockups in Balsamiq and Photoshop, and iterate many, many times through proposed site designs

Have a chance to rebuild one of the FreeCodeCamp projects (bigger and better, and with multiple APIs) for my company’s upcoming site launch

Really put my problem-solving skills to use in coming up with general solutions and troubleshooting

And overall, be the expert — or even the person who knows just enough to know where to look

For a web developer, working for a small company can be an awesome way to start on your career path.

It’s getting to be that time of year again. Hot cocoa and peppermint everything.

With the fall gloom settling over the Pacific Northwest, I was looking for a recipe that would allow me to replenish my dwindling supply of body lotion and provide an inkling of holiday cheer to combat the gray, rainy skies outside. This recipe definitely hit the spot.

This chocolate peppermint whipped body butter recipe makes for a fun afternoon craft, and it’s an easy first foray into world of making whipped body butters.

The last month been amazing. I started a new part-time marketing and (donor) development position with a tech-related, local nonprofit.

Apart from leaving me more time to spend with my family and pursuing hobbies, I’m finally able to apply the many skills I’ve learned over the last year of selling on Amazon, doing marketing for friends and family, and just plain geeking out on content creation.

I’m excited to go to into the office once my short work week rolls around. There’s also a lot of creative freedom and autonomy — things I’m starting to view as non-negotiables in my winding path toward reinventing my relationship with work.

Now on to the links. Here are some articles that have really resonated with me recently. Enjoy!

Technology

“The researchers devised a way to neutralize this amplification phenomenon—effectively forcing learning software to reflect its training data. But it requires a researcher to be looking for bias in the first place, and to specify what he or she wants to correct. And the corrected software still reflects the gender biases baked into the original data.”

“For years, the Federal Communications Commission has endeavored to upgrade the sort of short text-based messages — often accompanied by a loud alarm — that authorities have used since 2012 to warn Americans about rising floods, abducted children and violent criminals at large. But efforts to bring those alerts into the digital age — requiring, for example, that they include multimedia and foreign-language support — have been met with skepticism or opposition from the likes of AT&T, Sprint, Verizon and T-Mobile, and even some device makers, too.”

Technology

“It’s not too difficult a leap to make from wondering why your online access shouldn’t be free from walls erected by your cable company, to wondering equally why your online access shouldn’t also be free from limitations created by a social media platform, search engine, or e-commerce behemoth.”

“One day, you’ll see someone solve a problem in minutes — a problem that took you an entire day to solve — and you will once again feel like an imposter. Then, another day, you will help a teammate solve a problem, and you will feel fine again. Finally, you will realize — or your boss will tell you — that you weren’t hired for the skills you already had. You were hired for the skills you had the potential to have.”

“Girls made up about 27 percent of the 111,262 students who took an AP computer-science exam in 2017. The number of minorities underrepresented in the tech industry — black, Latino, and Native American — who took the exam nearly tripled from last year, reaching 22,199 students this year.”

A friendly disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links to Amazon products. When you click through to Amazon, I may receive — at zero cost to you — a small commission from the purchases you make. These purchases help support this site and allow me to continue writing helpful articles. (It also means more yummy chew toys for my canine kids.) 🐕

Unfortunately, when you search for natural cologne recipes on Google, most of the top-ranked articles in the search results feature recipes that just don’t make much sense.

Many call for diluting your oils in water, despite the fact that oil and water just don’t mix.

One prominently featured recipe calls only 10 drops of essential oils to be diluted in 8 oz of alcohol. If you follow that recipe, your scent will probably only last a few seconds. It’s just way too weak of a dilution.

Amazon Associates Disclosure

Lupe Camacho is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

Patched together with and plenty of

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